Friday, June 11, 1999
Technology News
EBay system crashes, auctions suspended
eBay's feedback all negative for Toronto auctioneer
eBay's explanation
More Technology News
Screen shot from eBay site from 7:30 EDT, showing apology. View full image.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- MarGee Charlier knew her business was in trouble when she logged in first thing Friday morning and saw that eBay, the popular online auction site, had crashed.
"Devastation," she said. "Disaster."
Charlier, of Kewaunee, Wis., supports her small business by selling between 50 to 100 antiques -- bringing in between $2,000 and $4,000 US -- each day through the site. But not on Friday.
All bidding was suspended at eBay as the so-called "personal trading community" with more than three million users in 50 countries struggled to rebuild a corrupted computer server.
The halt, which came after eBay tried to launch a revamped version of its site, disrupted bidding on millions of collectibles and curios, from military medals to mandolins.
"We do realize how frustrating this is for our community, and we are doing our best to ensure that the system is restored as quickly and efficiently as humanly possible," eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said Friday.
Bidding was stopped Thursday around 11 p.m. EDT. While eBay initially said the site would be back up Friday afternoon, it did not resume until about 8:30 p.m. EDT. Facts about eBay
EBay is the world's largest online auction site, with more than two million items listed at any time.
In an average minute on eBay, more than 150 new items are listed, 500 bids are placed and seven new people register.
EBay's Web site receives more than 600 million hits a month.
Half of items listed on eBay are sold.
Online auctions are expected to sell $3.2 billion US worth of merchandise by 2002, according to Internet analysts at New York-based Jupiter Communications.
EBay's annual revenues grew 996 per cent from 1996 to 1998, making it the fastest growing publicly traded company in California's high-tech Silicon Valley.
EBay had more than 3.8 million registered users as of March 31, 1999.
Among the items listed for auction when the site crashed were 11,377 Barbie dolls and accessories, an autographed black and white photo of Mother Theresa, and a Rolex submariner watch that had reached $11,000 with 21 bids when trading was halted.
Source: The Associated Press
EBay users were met at the site with a continuing stream of updates and apologies from management. "Thank you so much for your patience as we resolve this unfortunate situation," said one message Friday morning.
The apologies weren't worth much to Sharon Doney in Severn, Md., who is trying to raise $250,000 this year through online auctions of records and books to cover medical bills for her failing liver.
"This is frustrating," she said. "Say you were at a real auction and the auctioneer just walked away for a while. It just doesn't work."
Doney said that problems on eBay -- short crashes, slowdowns and postponed auction endings -- during the last few months have already prompted her to branch out into other auction sites, including eBay competitors Amazon.com and Yahoo!
John Dodge, editor of PC Week, said the company has had "daily failures every few weeks, but this one is the biggest."
One of eBay's worst previous outages, which lasted about six hours, prevented the company from holding auctions of just-released merchandise tied to the latest "Star Wars" movie.
The site outage was unrelated to the Worm.Explore.Zip computer bug, which began infecting systems across North America this week.
Andrew Bartels, senior research analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Giga Information Group, said outages should be expected in this type of burgeoning emerging technology.
"It's actually not that big of a deal," he said. "This is still new technology and these high transaction sites will periodically go down."
Bartels said that eBay traders have less to lose than online stock brokers, who have also experienced site crashes in recent weeks.
But eBay users said the effect of the crash radiated well beyond the people who buy and sell trinkets on eBay.
Jeff Schlicht of San Mateo, Calif., whose software program called AuctionPoster makes it easy to list dozens or hundreds of items on eBay, said his customers thought there must be something wrong with his own program.
"EBay is definitely having growing pains, and that's a big problem for me," he said. "I can't make excuses for them, but I depend on them."
"This is going to be a big boost for Amazon," he added. "Every single time stuff like this happens, customers start asking me when I'm going to design a system for another auction site."
Casual users appeared less affected, however.
Frank DeCaro, a writer in New York City who has bought everything from diet books to super hero glasses through eBay, said the crash would save him time and money.
"When you're buying junk, it's almost a blessing in disguise that you can't get to it," he said. "It's really another day with a little less clutter for me."
Ebay is supposed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It lists more than two million items, including antiques, books, computers, toys and sports memorabilia that can be purchased through a bidding process.
The company has struggled to keep up with a huge surge in demand -- registered users went from 1.2 million last fall to 3.8 million as of March 31. Those users bought and sold more than $541 million in merchandise through 22.9 million separate transactions during the first quarter of this year. EBay makes its money by taking a percentage on each sale.
The company's stock has been traded publicly since late September, and its stock rocketed from $8.43 a share to $234 by April, but has since fallen by more than 20 per cent.
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